September 2019-May 2021
Starting in 2019 and finally ending in Spring 2021 (yes – with everything that has been going on, it really did take that long) I worked on a piece about online privacy and surveillance in the wake of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica scandal. This was a tricky piece to write, mainly because of just how much information there is on the subject to first parse, then process, and finally convincingly impart to an audience, but I’m pleased with how it came out. It wasn’t easy, considering the life-sized and global interruptions to the process, and the number of times we had to rearrange the premiere, for which I’m very grateful to Delia Stevens (who commissioned the work for her ambitious Conundrums project), and to Sage, for finally stepping in to make our lives that bit easier when the second, or maybe third (I think the government has done some clever jiggery-pokery to reduce the total number) struck and we were back to the drawing board again. This version of the piece was written for Delia and her colleague David Insua-Cao, and ended up involving an extraordinary amount of gear, and became–certainly moving forward, I think–an unrealistic touring proposition, it simply requires too much set-up and strike time. At some point, I’ll rearrange it for smaller forces, possibly just yours truly and a couple of brass or keyboard players to improve its mobility. This version was funded by Sound and Music’s Composer-Curator scheme, Help Musicians Fusion Fund and Arts Council England. It was filmed at the Dutch Royal College of Art in The Hague, with the participation of Leonie Brandner, Jethro Cooke, Lena Longefay, and Louise Snape. I am indebted to all of them, and all resources used in the video edits are credited in full at the end of the piece. Below is said full piece, in its original instrumentation. Please be aware that it contains strong language from the start, and images of airship bombings, which some viewers may–quite rightly–find distressing. This performance was filmed by Rea River Films, who are consummately professional and are from literally down the road from where I grew up, in the true centre of the world: Birmingham, UK.
joesna.pe 